Think about the majority of fast food workers.....they're teenagers. Ice bins get left open, things fall in........but just like anything you'd grab at an out and eat restaurant, this can happen. I like the places where you fill your own cup up out of a machine that makes its own ice.

The kind that MAKE the ice and DISPENSE it from the same machine are less likely to be crawling with bacteria than the ice machines that only dispenese the ice, and are filled by employees.

I've seen employees in some fast food places carry 2 buckets of ice from another room, sit one bucket on the FLOOR while pouring the other bucket of ice in the machine, and then add the second bucket which has been on the floor.

No big deal?

I dobut if the employee stopped to wash thier hands before getting the second round of buckets, AND they stacked the buckets inside of one another so that they had one hand free on the trip back to the ice maker.

If its gotta be filled, I settle for milk or coffee, because I normally have my own little zip-loc baggie of ice with me anyhow.